Dagbók Finns og Hrefnu

Finally!!

Hrefna — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:17:10 +0000

It’s been a torturous couple of weeks, with exam-making and then exam-grading, but I’M DONE! YAY!

(Sadly, I’m only DONE for another month before I’ll be hit with a couple of make-up exams for those that failed the initial finals. I’m in denial until June begins. But by mid-June, I should be REALLY REALLY DONE!)

I don’t quite know why I find this process sooooo terribly difficult… maybe it’s because I’ve taken too many exams in my life… maybe it’s because I want the exams to be fair and balanced in some arbitrary way that even I can’t really recognize… maybe it’s because stamping people with numbers is just not my idea of fun, especially when I know just how little the numbers can mean in ‘The Real World’. The bottom line is that I’m probably too conscientious for my own good by a few orders of magnitude.

Now I look forward to no longer procrastinating my brain away to some other distant land, until it’s midnight and I really have to work on this stuff, and before I know it it’s 4 am and the sun’s rising again…

Yes, I’ve essentially gone mental. I’m ridiculously sleep deprived, and pulling my usual trickery of eating to compensate.

But, Big Sigh of Relief… all Done For Now!

My Job Is Up For Grabs

Hrefna — Sun, 06 May 2012 23:51:35 +0000

Today this posting appeared on the government job-board (sorry, Icelandic only as far as I can tell). Yes, it is my current job. Which I have sort of resigned from – ‘sort of’ because I’m officially taking a year-long leave of absence for now because they’d (almost certainly) like me back if I change my mind.

I don’t know what I’ll do next job-wise, I’m trying to keep a very open mind. For now I’m looking at job-openings, trying to find stuff that sounds interesting, but I don’t think I’ll really go for anything until next fall. I’m simply too burnt out after what feels like a not-very-productive marathon through the Fields of Academia, and I feel I need this summer to recuperate.

As things stand now, my remaining duties are to 1) finish grading the two finals from last week (it’s been very slow and painful going since last Wednesday – the beautiful window-weather isn’t helping either), and 2) write and grade exams for the make-up exams (for those that flunked any of my finals) that will be held in early June. After that I should be Done With Teaching. Fow now, at least. (And don’t get me started on the idea of having make-up exams in the first place, particularly when it’s less than a handful of students. Those things are among my least favorite things, ever.)

Ironically, it would appear that I’m quitting while I’m ahead, because the Association of Electrical and Computer Engineering Students was kind enough to pick me as ‘Teacher of the Year’ this past school year. I’m terribly chuffed and happy about that – I like to think I’m a good teacher for the most part, although I don’t (currently) enjoy the vast majority of tasks associated with teaching.

My 'Teacher of the Year 2011-2012' certificate from the Association of Electrical and Computer Engineering Students.

Yeah, so that’s where thing stand for now. Anybody in need of an electrical engineer?

Exam Season

Hrefna — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:43:17 +0000

I hate making exams. I hate making exams. I hate making exams. I hate making exams. …

Yes, grraoooaaarrrgh, it’s Exam Season. Again.

I’ve retreated to working from home because I can’t risk running into students while I’m making an exam because I’d just tell them all about it. I can’t lie.

But that still doesn’t solve the ‘making of’ problem. Where I feel I have to come up with ‘not-entirely-obvious’ questions, that are still solvable and with mostly realistic values. And that are ‘representative’ of the course material. Which spans 14 weeks, and 400-500 pages of material.

I suck at this.

Art is the Name of the Game

Hrefna — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:13:30 +0000

Jóhanna (Nökkvi’s fiancée, aka my soon-to-be sister-in-law) is graduating from the Icelandic Academy of the Arts this spring. To show off their students’ works, the school puts on a large graduation show at the Reykjavik Art Museum, which opened today. More/bigger images here.

Jóhanna by her very large painting titled "Ég geri hvað sem er" or "I do anything".

Only in Iceland? Here Jóhanna and her parents are with the First Lady of Iceland, Ms. Dorrit Moussaieff!

There were a lot of neat things on show. Here's a car of some sort.

A mirror reminding the world that being ordinary is terrible.

Installations are usually more fun to photograph than to figure out.

This work also caught my eye. It doesn't look like much from afar but if you go in closer...

... the entire thing is made up of unbelievably straight criss-crossing handwritten (!!!) lines in red, blue and black ink. There are definitely (Icelandic) words in there, but the lettering is a bit hard to work out. This work is by Ásgrímur Þórhallsson.

After I'd said goodbye to Jóhanna, I ran into Pétur, Signý and Fannar - but we never managed to find Jóhanna again, so we left shortly thereafter.

It was a gorgeous day (we seem to have permanently switched to spring now - yay!) so it seemed only fitting that cars that have been cooped up in garages throughout the winter got to go out and play.

The arty and busy entrance to the Reykjavik Art Museum.

Walking towards the car. This is the customs house which sports a huuuuge mural on one side.

Harpa, where we went last night to see La Boheme!

And finally, a peak down Lækjargata confirmed that there were a lot of people downtown, and not just tourists!

I'll end this with a picture of me all geared up for my bike-ride downtown today. As it happened, we ended up leaving the car downtown last night, without having initially planned to. Since the weather was so gorgeous (yet cold still) I decided the best course of action would be to bike downtown with the bike-rack on my back and then drive myself, the car and the bike home. It was a brilliant plan and worked perfectly, aside from me walking around downtown in a bright-pink biking jacked. I'm sure somebody's internal fashion police had a heart attack, but oh well...

Copenhagen Again

Hrefna — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 23:23:58 +0000

On my second day in Copenhagen I woke up at 8am (grrr… only 6 hours of sleep) and went to meet the good people of NORDUnet as well as the other representatives from the five Nordic countries to help plan this year’s conference. After the meeting ended that day, I headed back to my hotel for 20 minutes of horizontal time, before heading back out again to meet the planning committee at a fancy restaurant where we had a great dinner. On my way to the dinner I happened to walk through a portion of Kastellet, which was very pretty. Here are all the pictures, a selection of which is below.

At the Central Train Station at 09:30. I really liked the achways, but had a hard time getting a good picture of them.

Some of the trains had been 'decorated' - I thought the dragon was pretty cool.

The NORDUnet office is located within walking distance to the airport (building on the right). It was kind of weird to be returning to the airport via the train, but then not go on a plane but outside for a walk!

The houses next to the airport looked new-ish, but not fancy. The area was friendly enough though, and apparently the airplanes very rarely have to fly over this area, because they arrive and depart towards the ocean.

Many hours later I returned to the Central Train Station.

This photo doesn't do justice to the main hall of the station, it is most impressive.

Walking towards my hotel... all the buildings were very 'stately'.

Random Chinese restaurant lion.

Pretty stair-handle! The Danes make these crazy bikes where the front can be used to transport anything from children to shopping to small furniture.

They're not very big on bike-helmets though. Somebody theorized it was because there aren't any hills, so they never go very fast, but still!!

This lovely lady stared me in the face any time I exited my hotel. Apparently the hotel is on the border of the nice and naughty parts of town...

After resting in my bed for 20 minutes, I headed out again, and this time took the train to Osterport. The Danes seem mindful of giving people good views, with glass enclosures for the bridge out of the train station.

I walked past that big tower a little later...

Yup, there it is, with bikers biking on the fancy exclusive bike-paths in the foreground.

Time to enter the Kastellet.

This is the backside of the same tower as before.

I think this is probably my favorite picture from the day, with the blue sky, windmill, trees, and couple pushing a stroller.

Note the twists on the bark of the tree!

A side-leaning tree tunnel.

It was a very still day.

The trees looked like they were about a month ahead of their Icelandic counterparts, blooming-wise.

A very typical Danish house.

Leaving the Kastellet. I'll have to go back later to look at the rest of it.

At the restaurant I couldn't help taking a photo of the main course. It was strange, but quite good!

The dessert was also very good, but very lemony. We gobbled it up in no time!

Here is the menu. :)

After the dinner it was straight back to the train station and then to the hotel for me, where I again stayed up until 2 am, which wasn’t smart because I had to get up at 7 am the next morning.

I did manage to crawl out of bed feeling reasonably coherent (which was a marvel since all four courses came with wine the evening before) and I managed to check out of the hotel in time to resume the meeting at the agreed time. The meeting wound down around 2 pm, at which point I headed back into town and stumbled onto the Strøget where I took a nice stroll towards the Central Train Station.

Huh, I don't think I've ever seen the Lego Architecture line in a store before! Lego stores are fun! (http://architecture.lego.com/)

By the Central Train Station I decided to try out the Andersen Bakery, and got this fantastic sandwich. The menu at this place didn't look anything like what I saw in California, so maybe they just borrowed the name?!

Since it has started raining a bit, I took the train to the airport, and hung out there until it was time to depart. All in all it was a fun trip, and I’m glad I can finally say that I’ve been to Copenhagen! I might even go back!

An Evening in Copenhagen

Hrefna — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:58:26 +0000

As I’m typing this, I’m sitting in the Copenhagen airport (Kastrup), looking at the Icelandair-plane I’m about to board, and I figure I have some 15 minutes to kill before they start boarding. So here goes: My first evening in Copenhagen (click the link for all the images, I’ll just post a few below).

The bed in my tiny, yet somewhat swanky/modern room.

The bathroom floor was HEATED! Oh, few things bring a smile to a face as easily as a warm tiled floor in the morning.

There were also two chairs, a desk and a wall-hung TV in the room, but there simply wasn't room for anything else.

I was lucky in that my room faced away from the street, so it was very quiet - except for when the kitchen staff in the kitchen directly below me were doing their evening chores to the beat of loud techno-music. :)

I decided to go out for a short walk around 8pm. Here is the hotel I was staying at (with the black vertical sign on the outside).

The Danes like(d) decorating their buildings high up. Here's one interesting sculpture on top of a building.

What a helpful building!

I chose a hotel very close to the central train station which turned out to be very convenient.

Vertical things.

It turned out Copenhagen is Under Construction. According to a local they're putting in new subway routes and stations, so almost all the roads are torn up, and will remain so until 2016 or something!

One of the entrances to the Tivoli (amusement park). It cost 95 danish kronas to enter, so I decided to give it a miss since it was very late.

The City Hall, and the awesome bike-lanes the Danes have. I am very jealous!

Another picture of the City Hall Square. The red ad is a 'nice' touch.

More construction on the square.

Modern ad screens on old buildings are weird.

Walking towards the Tivoli again.

It looked very inviting except for the random screeeeaaaams!

I think this is my favorite image of the evening.

… and here is where my airport-internet-subscription ran out, and I had to go board my plane. A few hours later I was in my home, sweet, home. Anyway, back to the pictures:

Friday-Rock! It's funny walking around and all the words are strange, but you still mostly understand them.

Walking around at night is always fun.

The Tivoli tower. It hoists people all the way to the top while swirling them around. Scary!

The Danes sure do love their bikes, which isn't surprising considering just how FLAT the country is!

Huh, that looks like the same Andersen Bakery logo as we had in California. Very suspicious!

Mostly empty hallway in the central train station.

A hot chocolate and cookie were in order since it was getting a bit chilly outside, mmmm. By the way... See that 'guy' sitting by one of the tables. He's a statue!

And with that, I went back to the hotel, and stayed up way too late because Copenhagen is two hours ahead of Reykjavik, which meant that my usual bedtime of ‘midnight’ got translated to 2 am. That made waking up at 8 am ever soooo pleasant, not.

Far Far Away

Hrefna — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:48:54 +0000

I’m in Denmark!

Latitude never lies!

Yup, I’m on a two-night worktrip to Denmark, to participate in organizing a conference this fall about a subject I know rather little about. But I probably know more than Regular-Joe, and am therefore eligible to be ‘the Icelandic representative’ apparently.

Today's airplane was Eldborg. I like that the Icelandair planes have names.

So far the trip has been mostly uneventful. The biggest drama by far was being seated next to a women who’s husband had just been in a serious accident in Norway, and she was in absolute pieces. Thankfully it transpired quickly that a friend of hers was sitting right behind her (middle seats both) so I offered them my window seat so that they could sit next to each other. Best decision of the day, for sure. I was a little concerned that the man sitting next to me in my new seat was also about to have a nervous breakdown, but as they disembarked he didn’t seem to be traveling with them, so I don’t know what was up with him. A migraine possibly?

In other news, I found the ‘new’ Sherlock Holmes movie boring and gave up after 40 minutes and started reading on the computer. Then towards the end of the flight they had us ‘turn off all electronics’ so I went back to the in-flight stuff, and thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of The Matrix – although some of it is now showing its age. But I still remember the thrill of seeing it for the first time, so all was forgiven.

A sure sign one is no longer in Iceland: A train. There are no (proper) trains in Iceland. Nada, Zero.

I'm staying at the Clarion Collection Hotel Mayfair, and my room includes a 'light dinner buffet' which I took full advantage of tonight. Also, smartphones are a blessing for the solo traveler! Gotta love that internet...

After dinner I took a quick stroll around the area, which ended at this central-train-station-coffee-house. I walked around the Tivoli (too late and too expensive to go inside), and checked out city hall. I took lots of pictures, but because I always have to forget to pack something - in this case the camera USB cable - I probably won't be able to transfer the photos off the camera until I return home. Tsk, tsk!

Northern Exposure

Hrefna — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:18:54 +0000

One of the perks of having a state-sanctioned religion is that Easter-time comes with lots of holidays: Thursday, Friday and Monday surrounding Easter are all public holidays, and most schools take a week off or more. We used the opportunity to visit Kata and Jói up north, just like last year (see this, this, this and this for a refresher) for a change of scenery, and the chance to spend some time with good friends.

This year we mostly lounged around. The kids were mostly self-sufficient, we visited the next-door swimming pool a couple of times, visited a farm owned by Kata’s cousin, ate too much, and played board-games in the evenings. The most energy-sucking ‘activity’ was me going out with Kata and her neighbors for two ‘couch-to-5k‘ walking/jogging sessions (weeks 2 and 3) after which my legs reminded me why I avoid running (Helloooo Shin-Splints!).

All in all we had a lovely time, and hope to visit them again this summer, when the area is a bit greener.

Three road-warriors during a walking-bit in very bright vests because that road is a 'main-road'.

The kids by the main-house at the farm. Behind them the fjord stretches inland.

Walking up towards the house where they keep the cows.

Here be milking cows. Yes, they stay indoors all winter.

The grand-daughter of the farmers was not shy with the cows like the city kids (and adults). Here she is riding bare-backed, sorta.

Anna surveying the younger cows.

Inside the adjoining barn.

Yes, it looks like he's doing 'I'm the King of the World' routine, but he's actually asking to be helped off!

These guys were born 2-3 months ago.

Guess which animal leaves these droppings...

Yes, it's time for some very pregnant sheep!

But as always, even though the animals are 'interesting', playing in the hay is always the most fun.

Better view of the very pregnant sheep, due in some three weeks or so. All the non-pregnant ones were outside, enjoying the freezing breeze.

The man of the house keeping watch.

The pretty view.

Jói and Kata, pretending to be farmers.

Finnur and I trying our hand at pretending to be farmers.

We were treated to wonderful refreshments after our short visit. This isn't even all of it!

Later that evening Kata went into a full-on cake decoration mode for a party she and some good friends were planning for the next evening. She deftly had three machines running at once!

Jói meanwhile went hunting for things to use as entertainment for the party. And one computer just wasn't enough!!

For those that just can’t get enough of farm-photos, here are even more photos from the day!

Spring?

Hrefna — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:46:58 +0000

These lethargic pictures from last week are making me lethargic just looking at them so here is some happier fare!

Has spring finally conquered winter?!? It looked like it today, with a lazy cloudy drizzle hanging over the city all day, and I even thought I smelled something stirring in the plant-world. Here's some fingers crossed!

I can haz blue eyes (on occasion!)

Bjarki finally went to daycare today after finally having a full fever-free day yesterday, after five days of fever-episodes. What is it with our kids and waking up with little to no fever, only to spike one around dinner-time, thus dashing all hopes of daycare the next day?!?

A Lethargic Week

Hrefna — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 19:12:14 +0000

This past week, all of us but Finnur have fallen ill. Anna took the first shift, waking up warm on Monday, and then spending ALL of Tuesday sleeping (‘Can I go on the computer?’, ‘Yes’, ‘zzzzzz….’) before being mostly herself again on Wednesday. As she was getting better, I succumbed, and spent Wednesday afternoon until mid-Thursday feeling very low on energy and slightly nauseous. Then on Friday it was Bjarki’s turn, and he slept for most of Friday, and now almost all of Saturday.

This is how we've spent this Saturday: In bed. I figured Bjarki would rest easier if I were close by, because he'd be less curious about what various family members were up to. This photo was taken using the 'front-facing' camera on my phone. It's pretty crappy!

Bjarki lying on a big pillow in bed, feeling pretty miserable. Ironically, he was jealous of Anna earlier this week, because she got to stay home (and enjoy the computer), so he also wanted to be sick. Now that he's really sick though, he's been wishing he wasn't... Funny how things don't look the same once one's experienced them first-hand, eh? (This is from the 'proper' phone camera, but the focus was off. Oh well...)

Ironically, this was a week where I needed to be at work quite a bit, so it’s actually been Finnur that’s been home with the kids, but managing to work a bit nonetheless because he is a champion. He’s hoping he keeps managing to avoid this pestilence!